Thread: Help on speaker setup, PLEASE!!!!!!!!

A decent component set in the front is really all you need. If you must have a set in the rear then a set of coax will do the trick. If you put too much in the rear all you will do is pull the sound stage to the rear of the vehicle and kill your overall sound quality and imaging. When you go to a concert the band plays in front of you not behind you, and this is fact what you are trying to reproduce.

Originally Posted by thewizard

A decent component set in the front is really all you need. If you must have a set in the rear then a set of coax will do the trick. If you put too much in the rear all you will do is pull the sound stage to the rear of the vehicle and kill your overall sound quality and imaging. When you go to a concert the band plays in front of you not behind you, and this is fact what you are trying to reproduce.

People always quote the 'concert' example but I always thought its a bad idea for several reasons. Most shows have crap sound quality, either from the accoustics of the location/stage, bad sound engineers, or the fact that the tickets you buy are probably not in mid-center of the stage. Not to mention the fact that its near impossible to have your sub up front.

Personally, I prefer hearing a good recording played on a high end HT system. This way it feels like you are in the middle of the music. Plus it seems like the OP is going for more of a HT setup anyways.

Originally Posted by HiJackZX1

I forgot about the front staging. What your saying sounds logical. So the front should be component then all the rest should be 2 way speakers? Does the fact that I have a center speaker affect the front staging?

Center speaker in front is ok as long as you use a pc as your source. I would use a seperate midbass/tweeter though. Since tweeters are very directional you will want to play around with their placements to find the best sound.

Hum, if you look into what component speakers truly are...
A set of midragne speaker and a tweeter/discant speaker and a crosover filter box to splitt the signal to the correct place/speaker.

The discant is very directional, and on stock system, placed so that the speaker points directly to the driver+passanger.

My thoughts, is that you should most defently have component in the front.
And perhaps find some good 4-way speakers to have in the back rows. (Sony have a 6:9 4-way speaker that is incredible good audio wise, and cheap as well).

The "Concert" example is good, but not true.
You can still have good audio in each place, if done correctly. Meaning, adjusting levles so that while sitting in the middle row. The volume from the middel row speakers are what you hear.

(Just as a little note, many big concerts have speakers placed out amongst the publicum to even out the sound quality for the ppl in the back row) And the sound quality is allways best around the sound tech

and very Off topic... one way to check if the sound mixer dude is good or bad... listen to the pre-configuration of the stage... If he play Michael Jacksson or Pink Floyd... He truly knows what he does.. Don't need to like the music, but it's PERFECT to adjust a big stage with!

Originally Posted by HiJackZX1

My question is what type of speakers should I have? I drive a SUV, a big box, and I was told that I should have components in the 2 front doors, then regular speakers (2-way I guess) in all the other doors and areas.

Having components (separate mid and tweeter) makes it possible to mount the tweeter closer to ear level, thus bringing the sound stage higher and making it more natural. Disadvantage is the need to install the tweeters and the crossover, as well as issues which are caused by the separation of mid and tweeter by a significant distance (wave cancellations, time differential), since sound will be coming from 2 points now, especially for sounds that are near the crossover points, so are reproduced by mid and tweeter.

Having coaxials eliminates that, but if the speaker is low, then the sound stage will also be low. Some have rotating tweeters, you can point them upwards. There's less installation hassle of course, since you only have to install one speaker, and not 2 + crossover.

Go with components in the front for sure. As for rear: do you want passengers to have better quality, and do you want to do the extra work? Components will also cost bit more, since there are extra parts for crossover.

Which speakers do you have in mind?

And no matter what you install, remember, car door is not the perfect speaker enclosure. You may need to apply some sound deadener to the door panels. Car audio can be very time consuming, if you want to get it as close as possible to perfection.

Originally Posted by HiJackZX1

So I should go components all the way around? Front, Middle and Rear?

Yes, components are usually always better than 2-way's.

Mount the midbass in the stock doors. You will want to deaden the doors if you really want it to sound its best.

The hard part will be tweeter location. A good starting point is to focus both tweeters at a point in between the driver and passenger at eye level. Then play around with different positions until they sound the best. Also remember that the tweeters will sound the best when the left and right are equal distance from the listener. This usually means mounting them as far away as possible which is why people like the kickpanel.

For the rear seats, you might want to try mounting the tweeters in the headliner.